Which takes me back to the "commercial interview".
If you just got to hear what the drivers/owners/crew had to say, their personalities would become a bit more evident and the "characters" would develop. If all you're talkin' is retail, there is no reality.
Yes the sponsors are required. We also need the "people" or the TV sport will die from lack of fan support.
Spot on, Charlie! We all know the sponsors need to be recognized to keep them happy, but we need to see the personalities more clearly. And maybe if the interview time was a little more balanced and spread around, an interviewee might not try to ram all of the sponsors in at one time if they thought there may be another chance for an interview to hit a couple more sponsors.
Some of the drivers are very good at easing sponsor names into an interview in a fairly unobtrusive manner, kinda like, "yeah, we kicked the rods out, but we have lots of parts back at the trailer, and all the MAC tools we need to fix it up" or "that was our best pass of the weekend...looks like the new Vavoline synthetic formula is helping our performance" or something like that.
From a marketing standpoint, when the mention of the product name is perceived as annoying by a majority of the viewers, the product mention can become counterproductive. A rote list of sponsors recited or random insertion of a sponsor name in the middle of a sentence where it has no ties to what is being talked about fall into this category.
I'm a little embarrassed to use this example, but here it is: I am a fan of WWE and TNA wrestling---the action and the matches are ok, but it's the personalities and the story lines that keep me tuning in...I think the same could be true for helping build audiences for NHRA drag racing if the television package could work more on developing the personalities and story lines that are already there. (By the way, any other Pro Wrestling fans out there in Mater land that are willing to admit it???
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